


Slipping Through My Fingers

by issiefrancis



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/F, THERE ARE NO HAPPY ENDINGS HERE, what high angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 14:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9076228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/issiefrancis/pseuds/issiefrancis
Summary: When she's gone, there's that odd melancholy feeling / And a sense of guilt I can't deny / What happened to the wonderful adventures / The places I had planned for us to go.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I highly recommend listening to the song (Slipping Through My Fingers by ABBA, or the Mamma Mia soundtrack version) while reading. But I know y'all don't follow these recommendations. 100% guaranteed to make it more heart-wrenching though.

_Slipping through my fingers all the time._

Holtzmann wraps her arms around Erin, feeling the laboured breathing beneath her. "Shh, it's okay, honey. You can let go." She's crying, tears falling onto short hair.

She can't remember how they got to this point. It started out fine – they had all the time in the world, and then Erin started getting headaches and feeling dizzy. They'd both been excited, thinking that the IVF had finally taken.

How wrong they had been. The specialist had told them _no_ for the fifth time, and that she should see a doctor ASAP.

And although the diagnosis of cancer was scary, it was long-term. Almost everyone with this type went into remission with chemotherapy and radiation.

Holtzmann thinks it's ironic how she can engineer a radioactive bomb to smite ghosts into the void, but she has to trust an elderly man in a white lab coat to fire radiation into her girlfriend's pelvis while she watches from outside. "Sir, I work with plutonium on a daily basis!" she protests.

" _Well_ ," is his only response, Erin's eyes wide and pleading behind him as he shuts the triangle-marked door behind them.

Two things occur to her in that waiting room. Maybe this _was_ all her fault. She was, at best, lax about lab safety. And she did work with radioactive material on a daily (and nightly) basis.

And though they'd decided to delay marriage until they could be sure they had some successors to take care of busting during the ceremony and prep, it's time they got married.

These two realizations conflict in her stomach until she runs into the bathroom and vomits, dry-heaving when there's nothing left to come up.

Erin finds her there when her session is done, and sits down beside her on the bathroom floor, saying nothing, just pulling her into her arms. And it feels so wrong because Holtzmann isn't the one been betrayed by her body and Holtzmann isn't the one who has a terminal illness, and, and, _and_ …

She's so selfish.

She still cries as Erin kisses her cheek and smooths back her hair.

"I'm sorry," she sniffles.

Erin shakes her head and kisses her forehead. "It's okay, my love. Shall we go?" They don't need to talk about it. Erin knows what's wrong.

Holtzmann wipes her eyes and nods, smiling tremulously.

As they go to get up, Erin shakes her head and leans over the toilet bowl, coughing and choking up bile. Holtzmann sighs, practiced at this by now, and twists her hair up, rubbing her back.

When she finishes, gulping down air, Holtzmann hugs her, rubbing the nape of her neck soothingly. "I swear, it's been fifteen minutes since I got blasted, I can't believe it's this fast. This might be the worst one yet," she groans.

"It's okay. I'll look after you." Holtzmann takes a deep breath. "Let's get married."

Erin pulls back, smiling, opens her mouth, and promptly leans back over the toilet for another round. This time they end up on the floor, Erin in Holtzmann's lap with her forehead resting against the porcelain.

"I'm sorry that the thought of marrying me is so disgusting," Holtzmann quips. Still fighting for breath, Erin hits her lightly.

"I can't believe you just proposed to me in a public bathroom."

"Is that a yes?"

"You're an idiot, Jillian Holtzmann." Erin goes to lean in for a kiss, then pulls back. "I love you, but no way am I kissing you with that puke-breath."

Holtzmann mock-frowns. They end up kissing each other's cheeks, neither of them able to stop smiling.

***

And Holtzmann holds her late at night when she finally gets angry at the world for letting this happen. She cries ugly sobs into her shoulder and pounds the bedsheets and whispers _why why why_ until her voice grates into nothing. Holtzmann says nothing – there's nothing _to_ say, rocking her back and forth until she's cried out, falling asleep in Holtzmann's warm embrace.

Holtz doesn't sleep, holding Erin tight in her lap and crying the tears she can only cry when Erin can't see her.

***

_Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture._

They're sitting together at the table, a wastebasket half-full of hair beside them. Erin is slowly working through all the pictures of them together. She lays them out in chronological order, writing little cards about each of them and pasting them to the back of the photos.

"So you can remember it. So you can remember us," she tells Holtzmann, then her face crumples. Holtzmann is at her side in an instant. They hold each other, crying together.

"I'll never forget," Holtz whispers to her.

"There are so many things I wanted to do." Erin's lip trembles.

"I know, baby. Places we'd planned to go. I know. But we've got each other." Holtzmann wipes the tears from Erin's face and kisses her nose.

***

Kevin, for some reason, cheerfully produces a officiant's certificate and volunteers to be the celebrant. "I even know the words! Listen: _You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…"_

"Oh, Kevin, honey, no." Patty laughs and offers to teach him the script for a marriage.

Holtz grins and stage-whispers that they'll have to phonetically spell the passage for him. Patty shakes her head. "Y'all don't give Kev enough credit."

Holtzmann shrugs. "I'll let you take care of everything, Patty, my love, my light. Erin and I will go and write our vows."

"We will?" Erin looks up.

"We will."

***

_I try to capture every minute, the feeling in it._

The ceremony is simple. Abby and Patty and Kevin, and shockingly, Jennifer Lynch, are there. Erin wears the veil. Holtzmann wears a non-paint-stained tux, which they all know is a struggle for her.

"I've been living without a family since I was a child: my father left, my mother died, I grew up buck-wild. I'll never forget my mother's face, that was real. As long as I'm alive, Erin, swear to god, you'll never be so helpless."

Holtzmann had rapped it the first time she read it to Erin, and Erin had thrown her pain relief pills at her. "I love Hamilton as much as the next girl, but you're not rapping our vows."

"Alri-ight." Holtz made a face and sat down beside her. "I can write better ones if you want. If you want it to be more serious. But Hamilton has meant a lot to us, and I've always wanted to use that passage."

"I love it," Erin said firmly. "But can we have some other vows too?"

"Of course, my love."

Holtzmann stands in front of Kevin, whips out a piece of paper from her left breast and reads.

"Erin Gilbert. I loved your mind before I'd ever met you, and I love every part of you now that I know you. We've been through a lot together, and we'll go through more, darling. I love you and I'll be by your side for the rest of your days." She wonders if the words carry less meaning with an expiration date. She launches into the passage from Hamilton, struggling to speak with meaning and not with rhythm.

Patty and Abby are crying. Even Jennifer is teary-eyed.

Erin suddenly embraces Holtz and speaks her vows into her shoulder. "Jillian. You've been the best girlfriend anyone could ask for. I'm honoured to be able to stand – or lie, in a few months, probably – by your side. I love you. I love you so much."

Then everyone's crying and Kevin doesn't even have to say his bit, because Erin and Holtz are kissing and crying as they try to get the rings onto each other's fingers, and utterly failing. Eventually they pull away and manage it, and Kevin shouts victoriously, "I pro-nouns you wives!"

Patty and Holtz share a look and shrug. Kevin will be Kevin.

***

"Of all the people, why did it have to be her?" Holtzmann cries to Abby in the living room, one ear pricked for Erin, who is asleep after her third round of chemo.

"I know." Abby is red-faced from crying too.

"You know, there's a 98% survival rate. Why Erin? Why?" And then Holtzmann is sobbing, ugly and broken, while Abby and her cling together like drowning people.

When she hears a whimper from the bedroom, it's Abby who goes to check on Erin, leaving Holtzmann to twist her fingers in the throw rug and try to remember to breathe.

***

A year had seemed like such a long time. At least it wasn't six weeks, or a month.

But a year isn't really a year. Erin has to see her parents, has to sort out her will. They're still busting. They spend the last two months in hospice.

And then it was today. It's exactly a year, in fact, and Holtzmann feels like Erin has been clinging to her last few days, determined to make it to the mark, an overachiever even in death.

Yesterday, she'd been remarkably lucid. She knew it was coming. The four of them had sat in and on Erin's bed, reminiscing. Erin tells them that she's already planned the funeral, and that if they let Holtzmann play rap music, she'll come back to haunt them forever.

"And I know how the proton guns work, so you'll never get rid of me."

Abby is the first to break. They cry together for an hour, all of them clinging to Erin. Eventually, Patty and Abby leave, each of them spending a little while alone with Erin.

Holtzmann is left to lie beside her barely-recognizable girlfriend and try to sleep.

She fails.

***

_I watch her go with a surge of that well-known sadness._

It's just after midnight on the anniversary of the day they found out.

"Don't stay. Please. I couldn't stand to bust you. You'll be happy, there."

"I don't believe in the afterlife, Holtzmann. I'm a scientist."

"I know you're going somewhere nice," Holtzmann says stubbornly, ignoring the tears dripping down her cheek.

"I hope so," Erin whispers, crying too.

"I know so," Holtz wraps her arms around Erin and breathes her in.

"Goodbye, Jillian."

She kisses Jillian one last time.

_Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry. I've been sitting on this for a while and I just read over and decided to post it, so any mistakes are mine.


End file.
